It’s pretty crazy to think that we’re about a month away from one of (if not) the most anticipated Nintendo titles for 2014 in Super Smash Bros for the 3DS and yet it feels like they’ve managed to keep so much still under wraps. Even with a potential roster leak a few weeks ago, Nintendo is still teasing out new information.

Earlier this week we learned that each character will be coming with eight different skin options. What’s great about this is not only the variety, but Nintendo is finally doing justice to these alternatives outside of the normal different colors in the form of retro costumes. Many of the characters will now have different skins based on their respective history or even different genders like Fire Emblem’s Robin, The Villager from Animal Crossing, and the WiiFit Trainer.

In a post up on the Miiverse, Smash Bros creator, Masahiro Sakurai, confirmed that this alternative skin system when even deeper showing off the eight available skins for Samus. What’s exciting here is that we’re getting outfits inspired from the entire franchise over the years like Dark Samus (Black with blue trim), the Light Suit and Dark Suit (Metroid Prime Echoes), Fusion Suit (Alternative form from Metroid Fusion) Varia Suit, Gravity Suit, and fan favorites like Green Samus. It’s a nice change from typical generic color alternatives such as red, blue, green, etc.

Granted, Samus’s look doesn’t change a whole lot considering she’s in a space suit, but the concept for what they’re doing is there. When you take that sort of information and apply it to other characters, like Link for example, the potential for some really cool alternative skins is pretty high. I wouldn’t doubt seeing Link’s alternatives being from his various games over the years like Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask (Oni Link), Hyrule Warriors (cross promotion opportunity!) and why not Toon Link as well? There’s potential to throw clone type characters that didn’t make the roster cut in here as well considering the move set is the same. I mean, look at how much history some of these characters have. I find it pretty exciting that Nintendo is willing to dig deep in it’s vast library of games to throw things like this in.

Not only does this show off the detail and thought being put into the game, it’s also a nice nostalgia boost and shows a willingness of Nintendo to really make this small element meaningful. A game like this, which is a celebration of Nintendo’s long standing history deserves that level of care. Now if we could only nail down that elusive launch date for the WiiU version…